Fields of Fire Read Online Free Page A

himself. Only a Marine would dare to look like that around here. He must be a bad-ass dude.
    He stood when the recruiter reached the steps and began to follow him through the door. Only then did the Marine seem to realize that Snake had been waiting for him. He turned and gave Snake a devouring glance.
    “Need something?”
    Snake nodded, anxious to get inside the building. He was freezing. “Yup. Wanna enlist, man.” He followed the man inside, tapping his forearm. “Already got my tattoo.”
    The Marine suppressed a grin. “That was your first mistake.”
    THEN down there in the knee-deep sand, inside the sweatbox that was boot camp, underneath the roofs of endless gray tin buildings and the canopy of sultry southern sky, something happened. He found a way to win.
    It was nothing as magical as discovering some secret part that had lain dormant, but rather that his energies had finally found their outlet. He had always fought, and now it was right to fight. He had never been coddled, and now it was weakness to have been coddled.
    And there was that hard core, the nucleus of ferocity which sustained him, and which no one else could dent. He could not be broken. He sensed the difference after three days. He came with no false prides, no sensitivities that a drill instructor's words could damage.
    The trivialities of boot camp rolled off him. At worst, they were more of the same. He was beaten, but did not flinch. He sensed from the start that if he stuck it out, he won. When a drill instructor began to punish him he would stare impassively through the man, as if he felt nothing. Beat on me, Sergeant. Wear your goddamn arm out. It ain't any different. You can't squash me, and if you can't squash me, you lose. More, sir. Harder, sir. Faster, sir. I love it, sir.
    It created a mystique about him. His ability to endure, that iron shell from which all other traits derived, was also a magnet that drew the other recruits to him. In the dark of the squad bay after lights out, during field problems, on the bivouacs, his calm assessment of each threat and crisis, his reasoned suggestions without regard to pain, caused him to be the man they sought for guidance.
    And he loved it. To merely endure, to accept the pain that others feared and dreaded, was the ticket to a dignity that had eluded him all his life. And to fight, to grant his natural ferocity its whims, now brought him accolades instead of trouble.
    He would take on anyone, do anything to perpetuate that respect from the others. Early during training the recruits learned pugil sticks. They fell out onto the athletic field and formed a circle around their drill instructor, who paced inside the circle, an angry demigod, holding what looked to be a broom with a sandbag on each end.
    “This here,” he chanted, “is a pugil stick. What you do is try to kill each other with it. Now.” He looked slowly around the circle, staring coolly into each quivering face. “I need me a couple bad-ass hogs. Who's the meanest hog in this here platoon?”
    A tight-muscled Gargantua stepped out. Snake had already nicknamed him Statue Body. “The Private is, sir.”
    The drill instructor nodded once, then looked around the circle again. “Don't anybody else think he's a bad-ass? C'mon, girls. We can't let him play with hisself, can we?”
    Nobody moved. Statue Body was standing cool inside the circle, looking like John Wayne. Snake checked him out, and finally shrugged. What the hell. The bastard can't kill me.
    He stepped into the circle. “Sir,” he announced, playing the DI's word games, “the Private is the meanest motherfucker you got.”
    He stood motionless inside the circle. The DI peered down at him, hands on hips, unspeaking. Then his head went back and he laughed uproariously. The platoon had been silent but when the drill instructor laughed, everyone laughed: God had spoken.
    The drill instructor became enraged and screamed at the circle, pivoting to froth at them all.